silent library

MTV is aiming to nail that tough afternoon time slot today with three new comedy shows, premiering at 5 PM. The first series is the most easily identified format - DJ & The Fro, which kicks off at 5 PM. It's basically Beavis and Butthead with Web clips. Two guys named DJ and The Fro sit around at work watching viral videos instead of working.

This is roughly the ten thousandth show to try to take advantage of viral videos, including Comedy Central's Tosh.0, the new Web Soup, and some that are no longer with us (personally, I enjoyed Patrice Oneal's Web Junk on VH1 a couple of years back). The series is animated, thus the Bevis comparison. Whether DJ and The Fro are characters as giddily moronic and entertaining as Beavis and Butthead is hard to tell from what's been released so far, but if they aren't, this show will probably coast for a while and die quietly.

Next week marks the premiere of MTV's newest reality game show Silent Library, based on the game of the same name from the Japanese variety show Downtown no Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!!

For those who don't spend time watching videos forwarded to them by their friends and are therefore productive members of society, the game is played by six dunderheads in a "library." They each draw a card, five reading safe and one with a skull and crossbones on it. The player who draws the Jolly Roger has to do an uncomfortable or painful stunt, but must resist the urge to scream. It's the least intelligent use of a library since The Da Vinci Code hit the shelves.